Report 355
Report #355 Skillset: Music Skill: Octave Org: Spiritsingers Status: Rejected May 2010 Furies' Decision: We do not find this to be necessary. Problem: Time and time again, targets have managed to escape the effects of a key part of a bard's offensive repertoire, the 3 power Octave ability, by simply using equivalents of gust enchantments (tackle, beast gust, or passive movement abilities such as fearaura). This causes the Octave to drop immediately upon room movement. Given that the bardic specialized ability in Music to remove an Octave through PLAY OCTAVE TACET, takes 3p to cast and takes several seconds (4s) to both take effect and cancel the Octave, a proposal has thus been formed to make setting up an Octave less of a waste of power, and provide more incentive for a bard to actually cancel the Octave instead of resorting to (like everyone else,) simply using GUST or similar free forced movement abilities to negate this large portion of bardic offense. Solution #1: When a bard exits (both forced, or nonforced) a room imbued with an existing Octave, it will not immediately cancel. Instead, it begins to fall apart, akin to how Shadow Choke currently dissipates over time upon separation of the caster and target. The bard will have 8 seconds (twice the time of cancelling it via PLAY OCTAVE TACET) to return to the room and resume the now still-active Octave, before the Octave completely drops (The current "You release maintaining the maestoso" message upon exit is kept, but include a new addition along the lines of "Your maestoso begins to fall into dissonance" at 4 seconds, and "You resume maintaining the maestoso once more" upon returning. An intermediate message would be shown to any other bards in the Octaved room at 4 seconds regarding the Octave falling out of harmony, in addition to the message received by casting bard. The current message when Octave completely drops 8s will still be visible to everyone in the room, in addition to the casting bard. NOTE: These numbers can be adjusted, depending on thoughts about this Solution, to balance between being an useless change, to being too much. Suggested figures so far are 4/6/8 seconds for Octave to completely fall. Comment please!) Solution #2: In *addition* to the above (Solution 1), as befitting such masters of voice and song, bards are still able to use their knowledge of the OCTAVE ability to cancel the Octave (for 3p) in the current time (~4s) when the bard holding the Octave is in the room. However, should the bard maintaining the Octave be out of the room when the attempt to cancel(Tacet) the Octave is made, the cancelling bard will find it much easier to remove the maestoso - and will find the act draining less power (0p/1p?), as well as being much faster in both the time it takes to cancel (perhaps down to 2s?), as well as the recovery of mental equilibrium(halved?) associated with the playing of such a counterpoint. Solution #3: In *addition* to the above (Solutions 1, 2) - following is suggested to assist in group situations where more than one bard may wish to set up Octave, since currently, only one bard may attempt to raise and hold Octave up in a room at any given time. Whilst some of those of the bardic profession can be solitary creatures, they are equally able to perform in groups, and some indeed flourish in such environments. As such, within an Octaved room, any bard may lend their instrument and voice to the maintainence of the Maestoso in the room (PLAY OCTAVE SEMPRE - or a new syntax. The Power cost for playing Octave in this way perhaps could be lowered a little). When orchestrated in this manner, should any of the bards fail to return to the room within this time limit, their contribution to the maintainence of the Octave will fall, as per above. The Octave/Maestoso will only fall completely if all of the performers are separated from the imbued room for the duration listed in Solution 1. Although made more resilient in this fashion, the Octave is just as vulnerable to falling when the proper counterpoint(PLAY OCTAVE TACET) is played - and thus may be cancelled accordingly should such a bard choose to do so, regardless of how many such contributors to the Maestoso there are. (Practically, this'll basically mean more than one bard can put their Octave up. Depending on the time of the grace-period in Solution 1, this may not be needed.) Player Comments: ---on 4/14 @ 06:07 writes: A similar thing was suggested in conversation when 341 was being discussed, but I decided not to include it as a solution because I didn't want to distract from the gusting which I feel is its own valid, separate issue. I'm not sure 8 seconds isn't too long, but I do like the general idea of a short grace period before the effect fades from a room. Those 3ps do add up! With a shorter- than-8-seconds timeout, you probably wouldn't need to do the extra coding for the circumstance of the caster not being in the room when another bard goes to put octave down either. ---on 4/14 @ 11:19 writes: Updated with Solution 3. The timing of 8 seconds can be changed, of course. It was chosen to be twice that of cancelling via TACET (which costs 3p). I felt it made little sense that an ability designed to counter it would be worse off/equal at best, compared to readily-available enchants. ---on 4/15 @ 12:28 writes: I like solution #1, maybe adjust the time to 6s. ---on 5/2 @ 02:49 writes: I agree that octave could stand to not immediately fade, but I wouldn't go further than 3 - 5 seconds for the Octave grace period. Anything much more just becomes a room effect which wouldn't fade, especially with bard playing speed. ---on 5/2 @ 14:21 writes: I agree with solution 1, but think the time as Viynain and Estwald pointed out should be lower, maybe 4 seconds. Solution 2 and 3 are adding to much and over complicating the issue with a over the top upgrade. ---on 5/11 @ 20:46 writes: 3-4 seconds would be great. ---on 5/18 @ 06:21 writes: Doesn't the recent addition of summon resistance to pfifth help with this? I guess my sympathy is limited when a 10p channel locked barrier can be dropped with that same gust. ---on 5/18 @ 20:22 writes: Barrier is also, while definitely useful, not as essential to your offense as fifth/octave are for most bards. You have the demesne, which doesn't dissolve immediately upon your leaving the room. If people leave the room with you, they're likely still in the demesne, whereas if they leave the room with the bard, the bard has to start again from scratch. This isn't a 10p trans skill we're talking about, but a precept of basic offense for the class.